The generation of waste is a great burden to society and infrastructure, made ever worse by the gradual increase in the world's population. Governments are being required to manage all types of waste, particularly domestic waste, in an efficient and effective manner that is sustainable over the long term. As part of the strategy to tackle this waste burden, many governments have turned to recycling to reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill sites.
An important step in the management of waste is its collection. In many countries, a number of schemes are already in place for the collection of recyclable or waste material from public storage containers and/or household storage containers. In particular, community recycling centres are provided in many countries, which contain large, public storage containers allocated for different types of material (such as glass, plastic or paper). In addition, commercial premises are commonly provided with large storage containers for recyclable material. The storage containers themselves may be adapted to be transported to local processing plants. Alternatively, the recyclable material may be transferred manually from these storage containers to conventional collection vehicles, which then transport the recyclable material to local processing plants.
The problems associated with these schemes for the collection of recyclable material include the difficulty of efficiently collecting and then transporting the recyclable material to the relevant processing plant. In particular, where the storage containers themselves are adapted to be transported to local processing plants, the size of the storage containers is limited, and hence the number of collection trips is increased. Furthermore, where the recyclable material is transferred manually from the storage containers to conventional collection vehicles, which then transport the recyclable material to local processing plants, this manual transfer of material is inefficient and labour intensive.